MYSTERIOUS FACTS ABOUT COLD

                    

       COLD DESERT:    A term applied to the ice sheet of arctic and Antarctic regions, where vegetation is prohibited by low temperatures, and sometimes extended to the tundra, where vegetation is severely restricted by the climate.

      COLD FRONT: The boundary line at the earth’s surface between a mass of advancing cold air and a mass of warm air, beneath which the cold air pushes like a wedge. The frontal surface rises at a steeper angle than in the case of the warm front. The passage of a cold front through a place is normally marked by a rise of atmospheric pressure, a fall of temperature, a veer of wind, a heavy shower, and sometimes a line squall, perhaps with thunder

       COLD POLE: A name frequently applied to Verkhoyansk, in eastern Siberia, where excessively low temperatures have been reached; the mean midwinter temperature is -50 degree centigrade, and the lowest reading ever taken on the earth’s surface, -70 degree centigrade, has been recorded. This is due, in the first place, to the development during winter of an intense anticyclone over Siberia, and in these quiet weather conditions, the accumulation of a vast pool of abnormally cold air. The village of Verkhoyansk, situated almost on the Arctic Circle, lies at the bottom of a steep-walled valley carved into the plateau. The already cold air on the plateau is still further chilled by contact with the snow, which loses heat by radiation very rapidly in the clear, dry atmosphere –a loss which continues throughout the long polar night; this chilled air then sinks into the valley, and gives the excessively low temperatures at Verkhoyansk.